Requesting assistance!
by LibelleRequestsAssistance
Summary: This is Libelle (for short). I am adrift in space close to your location and in need of assistance (and someone to talk to, if that isn't to much to ask for). I will be broadcasting appeals repeatedly and thank you for your kind interest.
1. Broadcast01, unknown coordinates

[Static noise]

Come on, don't be like that... ah, it's running. _Good girl!_ [clearing throat]

Begin voice recording. Greetings to you, whoever you may be! I am recording this now and will send it, portion by portion, to the nearest star-system with sufficient technological sophistication to pick it up. If the translator mechanism is working, this should appear in the most commonly used vernacular of your planet, either in text or video form. If not, you'll probably just see a pink weasel speaking gibberish right now and will, in all eventuality, already have turned this off. If you want me to continue speaking, please indicate your approval by putting both hands/top tentacles to the sides of your head, thumbs/sides to the temples, and wriggle said appendices. Thank you.

[Static noise]

Temporal navigation is malfunctioning, so all I can do is make sure these broadcasts reach you in the correct order. I have hardly any control of the time elapsing between each portion on your side. If you could trace back my signal and send me some information about where, and when, we are, I would be very grateful. If not, I will at last have a good laugh looking at the footage of you wriggeling your appendices beside your head, as recorded a few moments ago by the camera on the communications device you are holding now.

[Static noise]

Sorry. I don't get much entertainment drifting out here. That being said, I believe an introduction is in order, in case there is still someone out there listening. My name is very long and complicated (yes, even by the standards of Raxacoricofallapatorius. Lovely place, by the way, if you happen to be listening from there. If not, let's just say it doesn't hurt if you visit the place with an intense head cold. But I digress.) As I said, my actual name would probably be quite a bother for your vocal organs, so feel free to use the abbreviation, Libelle, which should also be provided as a nametag with this file.

[Static noise Static noise Static noise]

I am, to my knowledge, the last remaining crew member of my vessel and in need of direction and a safe place to land and make repairs. I'm afraid I cannot disclose any information concerning my planet of origin and species as of yet, but I can assure you that my intentions are entirely peaceful and that I will, after repairing my craft, most likely be on my way, never to see you again.

[Static noise, accompanied by an unpleasant screeching. Voice slightly out of breath]

It seems my time for this broadcast is coming to a close. Please forgive any mistakes in grammar, expression or orthography; all circuits of my vessel have been damaged and it's a miracle the translator matrix is still working.

Please respond. Which species is reading this? Which planet are you on, in which era?

Next time I shall explain to you the cause of my misfortune, as far as I dare to.

This is Libelle, signing out.


	2. Broadcast02, Sol solar system

Greetings again! I - oh![metallic clatter] Sorry, that was my... ah... okay. Never mind. I think fixed up an improved Signaling Beacon (it's a beacon. And it sends my signal to you. Names were never my forte), so hopefully we won't be interrupted by static as often any more. First of all, thank you so much for your responses! The admirable Stealmyshow and speezz (interesting names, by the way – what does the second one signify?) have answered my call within less than 24 hours, if my temporal readings are correct. One of the responses was less informative, but I am grateful for any acknowledgment of my signals, nevertheless! So I am successfully am broadcasting, and to planet Earth, early 21st century, too... Fascinating! And a bit strange [clears throat]. Well, never mind. I am glad, in any case, that I reached a private network of some kind, just as intended, and not any government which would probably either try and fire missiles at me (hah, good luck with that!) or trick me into landing and then [static].

Sorry, I had to delete the last few minutes and spare you my paranoid ramblings. I promised to tell you what I can about how I got into this situation, and that's what I will do now.

My shipmates and I were on a special mission, mostly collecting data for further exploration. There were seven of us – the diplomat, who has the final say in all controversial matters, and a crew of six. My actual duty was to monitor structural integrity when we were in flight, and scanners and comms when were weren't, and in the meantime I was trained by Z[swallowing]... by our technician as second mechanic.

[Pause of several seconds].

We traveled for quite some time without any positive results – the only leads we had were centuries old. Stress levels on board became higher and higher, and finally... The second in command, you would probably call her Light, was in charge of the crew's physical and mental health, and in this position she had the authority to order shore leave. So she did, and everyone went of to be on their own for a while. We took turns of watching the ship, of cause, while the other six went to some of the many places we had visited and tried to relax there. And the wonders we have seen... I could tell you of vivid blue jungles and creatures of living metal; of moons, frozen in the moment of their explosion, a giant firework of glittering dust in the eternal night of space. The rainbow nebula of Stryxx, the Rings of Akhaten. The suns of Rram, so painfully reminiscent of home. Those ice sculptures where... But I digress again.

When it was my turn to watch the ship, I took the opportunity to improve the spacial structure of our vessel by... well, you probably wouldn't believe or understand an explanation anyway, even if I gave one. Suffice to say it would have been very uncomfortable and shaky, had anyone been in the areas of the ship I improved.

The.. [static] Sorry. Our vessel has very advanced shields, and I made sure they were up and fully functional while I re-calibrated... while I did what I did. Thus, it is entirely and completely a mystery to me how _that girl _could appear out of thin air in one of the corridors. Oh, that accursed girl! ... _Technically_ what happened is not her fault, but then, technically, she should never have been able to appear on board in the first place, so yes, I do blame her! If she had only trusted us, nothing of this would have happened! Do you have any idea how in all skies someone could have just_ popped up_ on a quite securely shielded spacecraft? Because I sure as all known hells don't.

[Another pause of about 10 seconds]

Anyway. Can you recommend a safe place to land on your planet? You would recommend somewhere deserted, probably, with few possible eyewitnesses or security cameras around? Or do you think I should land in a more populated area and hide in plain sight, among the masses of one of your metropolis? My ship is quite capable of disguising itself and I won't appear alien to casual observers either, I reckon. So, what to do? Again, I would be very grateful for your assistance. I'm going to tell you more about the unfortunate (hah!) girl next time, because if I do now, I'll probably start swearing, which wouldn't service anyone. No, instead, I'm going to fix something. Because by all heavens of your choice, there is enough here in need of fixing! And I could use some exercise with a hammer now. So...

This is Libelle, signing out.


	3. Broadcast03, probably Tirari desert

Greetings! This is Libelle, and I am a little [coughs] hoarse today. You can blame speezz for that. Yes, you! But my friend, I grant you this: you do have an (albeit strange) sense of humour. When you said "Winter Olympics", I somehow expected that place called Sochi to be, you know, wintry? As in, freezing cold?

So, when I landed, I stepped out of the door in my expedition coat from the ice deserts of... [swallows] some place. I also took the lovely rainbow-coloured scarf I bought on Barcelona – mind you, each colour organic! Not dyed, but made from the hair of a specific breed of tree-horned yak. Well, as I was saying, I stepped out of my door fittingly adorned for Arctic temperatures– and you know what into? A blizzard? No, into brilliant sunshine! On a beach! There were even people swimming, and my ship had disguised itself as a closed ice-cream vendor, though I suspect she only did that to make fun of me.

Congratulations, speezz, you have successfully played a prank on a... [static, just for a split second] on me. You made me look like a [unintellegible word]. Does that even exist in your language?

Well, by the time I got to the boulevard, I was practically melting and took the first chance to get rid of my coat. Which was a coffee shop; I entered it on a whim, really, just because I liked the name. I believe it was a joke. But then, what do you know. People see all kinds of thing when they look up at night and search for patterns between the stars...

[a moment of silence]

When the person behind the counter wrinkled their brow at me, I did not think much of it. But just after the first sip of my overly-complicated-named drink which probably contained only a marginal amount of actual 'coffee' (I might run an analysis of it later, using a stain on my shirt, about whose genesis you will be filled in in a moment), that I realized something was of.

People were looking at me funny. All the people in there, all ages and sizes. And just to make sure, I may have forgotten to check the temperature before I got out, but I am not entirely stupid. I _did_ remove all of my equipment before disembarking, including the welding goggles – and I always wear those, [static, then pause]

My clothes are definitely Earth-style. Leather boots and cord trousers in light brown, a white shirt, and a grass-green velvet swallowtail coat, because the day I take that one off will probably be the day I am no longer Libelle. Anyway, one woman winked at me, I think, when she passed me by, and I began to think of this as some kind of joke. I might have said something like "It's nice, being friends with all kinds of people, isn't it?". At the sound of which the employees behind the counter turned white and one of them ran for the manager, who appeared to be a very large very dark-haired and very loud-voiced man. He said something along the lines of he does not want foreigners to make political statements in his shop and if I didn't put away that scarf he would through me out by it. When I objected, stating my confusion in a fairly civilized manner (I addressed him as "honored sir" despite his behavior being neither very honorable nor very noble, and I even reached for his hand)... Well, lets just say the rest of my drink ended up on myself and the table, the table on the floor, and I on the pavement, gasping for breath, and being told they "don't want my sort" around there, when soon the world will be watching. Well, hope the world is watching from a safe distance. I am, sure as all known hells, going to.

In any case, I have used up most of the remaining energy to transferred my vessel to another location, somewhere nice and remote. No people here, only lots of reddish dust and rocks, a few bushes, and a road, but that one's a good distance away. Then I spend almost a whole day oscillating on the threshold of the engine room, but I am at a loss what exactly is wrong with it, and without our proper mechanic I don't dare to go in there if it might be dangerous. Staying out and leaving things as they are might be just as dangerous, though. The engine kept making strange noises; well, stranger than usual – it is as if she is trying to tell me something, this terrific, moody, beloved, complicated ship. Power levels keep falling, even now that I have turned almost everything of... Most of the stuff was broken anyway. But what to do now? I know better not touch the temporal navigation unit, and I should avoid another spacial displacement unless it's absolutely necessary.

At the moment, she's running on auxiliary power, and I'm bent on getting more if the systems back online. That's, actually, what I should go back to now. I'll postpone the story of the girl in the corridor to my next broadcast, which will be made as soon as I am reasonably sure the console won't blow up in my face.

This is Libelle, signing out.


	4. Broadcast4, ship interior

Greetings...

[sigh]

I'm not in a very good mood today, though this time it's not the weather that I blame. Nor any of you, of cause... I'm really glad you are out there, listening to me. Because if this goes on, these messages might as well become my obituary! [irregular breaths, swallowing, then a pause]

As I am alone out here, in the desert, dusty wind rattles at the hull of my ship, and when I step outside, my skin is singed by your alien sun. The landscape is serene, vast; a magnificent sight, red and brown dust and rocks and a blazing blue sky.

In space, distances are so enormous that they lose meaning; everything just blends into background an becomes a wide, cold, foreign _distance_.

But this, this very desert, is so _alive!_ There are ragged bushes, bending under the wind, lizards swishing about between the rocks, and the stones and the Earth themselves resonate with the ages they have seen; being battered by wind and sudden rain, for centuries and centuries. Your world is beautiful (just as any other, perhaps, but this is the first I spend several days on alone, so perhaps that's why I like it... or perhaps because it's true what they say, and our kind is just drawn here... yes, I should tell you, because now it does not matter any more if I keep any secrets, if my ship and I will both die here... but not now, not yet, not if I can still fight).

I have to keep a bit of order in this, or my confused memories will just gush forth, like the energy which is drained by something, I don't know what. The ship is slowly bleeding to death. No matter how hard I try, no matter which systems I repair, I cannot find the leak, I cannot find the cause, she just... dies. And chances are, I will die with her. There is one thing, one last thing I can try, but I'm not ready for that yet. I linger, and I think talking to you will help be find my resolve... or to sort my thoughts, at least.

So I will begin, at the beginning of the end, as I promised, and tell you about the girl in the corridor. It was about four of your days ago, while I was watching the ship, alone. I took the chance to improve structural integrity in the upper living quarters, so the inner shields were partially down, but the outer shields were up and holding. I had to make sure of that, see, because otherwise I would have lost atmosphere, or worse, if one of the walls opened up to space during the process. The ship doesn't like me doing that, rearranging her (she prefers just to build new rooms and bend space to make everything fit, no matter how much energy that may waste), so she turns all shaky and displaces stuff. That's why I had to wait until I was alone, so I'm the only one to suffer from her tantrum. Ow! [sound of sparks flying]. No reason to let a cable fizz out on me, dear, I still haven't given up on us yet!

Anyway. I was reordering the rooms, going through the corridors checking for irregularities, when suddenly _she_ appeared before me. I mean, she materialized, in a split second. No flicker, no fading glow or passing distortion caused by the after-effects of a transmat or something. She was just there. One moment, nothing but an empty corridor, and the next, there was a girl, falling backwards as if she missed a step on a stair. She hit the floor, bottom first, with a dull thud, got all teary-eyed, and then she saw me, just as I dropped my tool box, spilling its contents all over the floor.

I must admit I wasn't all too eloquent in addressing her, and since I could not exclude the possibility of her being a threat – popping into a shielded ship and all – I reached for something I had just wielded a moment before, something I knew to be lying on top of the pile of tools. I was never good at threatening people, so I just pointed it at her, and she raised both hands in a universal gesture of capitulation, claiming – without crying, i give her credit for that – she had just been travelling with a friend, missed a step on a stair, and appeared in my ship. She seemed to believe her friend would appear any moment to pick her up... and then she realized what I was holding, which was not, as I intended, a blowtorch. It was a dentist's periscope.

We got over that surprise, and I persuaded her to accompany me to the control room. Upon arrival, however, she went as pale as a sheet, mumbled something like "impossible" and stated screaming nonsense about me giving her drugs, trying to extract information, and how I could dare, and something about her friend being either terribly upset or terribly angry, or possibly both. At that point, I had enough of her, and the ship didn't seem to like her much either, so we put her in a stasis field and called back the others.

When all were assembled, we discussed what to do with her... You know, now I think if I hadn't been so rash... If I had been patient, if I had tried to talk to her, to find out what her story was... But now it's too late to ponder on that.

I remember every second of that last scene. The girl, frozen in a split second, hovering in her stasis beam. The diplomat, whom I have never seen wearing anything but black, his face only inches away, studying her. The mechanic, my master, scanning her with his... well, he calls it a wrench, but it's more like a multifunctional diagnosis tool; his dark eyes almost closed. My dear Light in her red ballroom dress (because I had snatched her away from a posh dance party on some space cruiser), working the medical console. She is only a few years older than me, but we grew up in the same orphanage, having lost our parents in the great war, and she practically raised me... Then there were our two main pilots, him leaning on the railing, her watching the diplomat (her husband) and the girl with profound worry. And the musketeer of cause, who also stood at the railing, but this arms were folded and he looked as unperturbed as ever, despite wearing some ragged clothes because I had pulled him directly from an underground wrestling match or something.

There we were, when suddenly the engine's humming slowed down, the lights began to fade, and a strange howling echoed through the control room. I ran over to my part of the console, punched the shield oscillators some notches higher, and then the whole ship began to tremble and to screech in a way I have never heard her before, and everything went white before my eyes, and then we were falling, falling, tumbling through space, and when I came to, I was alone, the ship was badly damaged, and they were all gone. The girl, the light, my friends, everyone.

I called out to you, and what strange fate is it that we ended up here, of all places...

Now, no matter what I do, the energy levels keep dropping. Before long, my ship will be dead, and then, seeing this is a desolate, lonely place far from any human settlement, I will soon follow.

The only thing I can do now, the only thing left, is to link up with her directly. If I connect my consciousness with her operating system, the matrix consciousness if you will, she might be able to tell me what is wrong with her. But she is a five-dimensional engine; she does not exist in linear time, and letting that into my head may as well kill me, or drive me insane.

If only Zephy were here. He is the real mechanic, he would know how to do this correctly. If only any of them were here. But they are gone, beyond my reach – I am beyond their help. So I sit here, in the gathering darkness as the lights begin to fade, in the rising heat as the atmospheric control slips away, listening to the sound of my own voice, echoing through the shadowy dome this control room has become.

Time is running short. I have to decide. Thank you for being with me, and good bye.

[click.]


	5. Broadcast05, on the brink

Greetings, my friends! Yes, I'm still alive, and not mad – not more than usual, at least. We are both alive, my ship and me. She's repaired and recharging, and now it's just a matter of waiting, just a short time, and then we'll be gone.

After my last broadcast, I started the interface and merged my consciousness with the matrix.

It was... there are no words to describe what it felt like. My whole self was expanding, as if a blind man could suddenly see millions and millions of colours; I suddenly was everywhere and everywhen, time and space dissolved in a slow explosion, into a million of snowflakes, dancing like microscopic mirrors... And then the matrix consciousness found me. She pulled me back, she spoke to me, not in words, for words were to vague and clumsy for the exchange we shared, but in pure thought. What I can give here is no more than a dim shadow of these things.

She let her deep sorrow surge through me, made me feel her fear. _We are dying._

_I know. What can I do to save us_? I answered in the same way, sending my love and trust to her to carry my question.

_This universe is wrong. It is neither the one I was grown in, nor the one where we lived after _he_ saved us. _She relived the explosion in the control room, partly through my eyes, my own memories of the scene when white light engulfed the girl in the stasis field and everything else.

_When you were cutting off parts of me, you made me vulnerable. I impulsively cried out to a kindred soul, and for a moment I touched the matrix consciousness of _his _ship. We were in synch, so my lowered inner shields dragged down hers, and when the girl fell inside her, she fell through space, into _me_. I wanted to tell you, even the girl wanted to tell you, but you muted her and none of you were ready to listen to me. So I couldn't warn you when _he_ came in her wake. _

My guilt and panic almost drowned us both. _So _he _came_ _to save her, and I blew _him_ up, too?!_

_When you raised the inner shields while his ship was already landing inside me, I would have been ripped apart, and so would the girl and everyone in the console room. I tried to resist. Space was bend and warped, until it finally ripped apart. You and I were pulled through the rift, into this world. But _he_ and his_ _ship were not, and I believe that she saved them. Together, they saved all of them, I am sure. They are both so old and wise._

Her admiration for _him_ and his trusted vessel flooded my consciousness, calmed my fear and guilt.

_I am so young, and I was bred for battle. _Now it was her shame that I felt, so similar to my own. _His ship... I could feel her recoilwhen she touched my weapon systems. _

_But you refused when you were ordered to abused them! _I tried to pacify her, in a wave of calm and trust. _And you went with us, you helped us run away to find _him_. Doesn't that count? _

The warmth of her response was like the glow of sunsets on my face. _I hope so. Because I don't regret a second of it. You allowed be to see the universe _he _saved._

There was so much gratitude in her answering thought, but also a deep, intense longing, the same as I felt, for home. Our real home, and we shared a dream image of our planet, in its vast orange glory, returned to its place in real space, in a sky full of stars.

_Can we go back there? _It felt like I was crying – not with my eyes, because at that moment, I existed only as bare consciousness, but with my hearts and soul.

_Yes. I am still clinging to life. _A picture formed in my mind, of a small crystalline battery somewhere in the wiring of the engine core. _You have to find me, and to give me life._

My confusion at this was met with irritation. _I was too badly damaged, and time is running out. I could not adapt to this universe and its energy, so I need energy from our home dimension, either one of them, to recharge. _Sadness touched me, asking for forgiveness. _I have to ask you for a fraction of your life. That is the only energy I can use to gain the power for one jump, back through the rift. I would not ask for it..._

_No! No, I give, I gladly give some of my life to bring us back home. _

And so I did. When the connection was severed – what had felt like mere moments to me had taken several hours of your time, as I later found out – I crept into the central core, the mechanical heart of the ship, the brain to her mind, and there I found the little light in the darkness. I took it in my hands, I closed my eyes and offered myself. Just for an instant, my body turned ice cold, as several years of my time left me, feeding the glow of the little battery, making it shine brighter and brighter, and I laughed off the cold at this amazing sight.

The ship is now looping this energy, my sacrifice of years, back on itself, slowly recharging. I have repaired the remaining systems, and as power levels rise, the lights are coming back on, the temperature is becoming more endurable, and soon we will jump up, out of your atmosphere, through the rift, and be gone.

I used my spare time to search your information networks and found out that even you, in this parallel universe, know _him_, even if _he_ is only a story to you. But no, I shouldn't say 'only'. Stories have power. It were stories of _him _that Light told me in the gloom of the orphanage, when the starless sky of our small world had gone dark. These stories permeated everything; they connected her and me, they connected us to others, even later when we were adults, and they were how those meetings began, in little rooms and with shared fantasies. We found like-minded people, ones who didn't believe in just sitting and waiting and letting _him_ carry all the burden, suffer all the trouble on hisown. We dreamt of imitating him; stealing a decommissioned ship and running away, pushing through to the other universe, the one we originally came from; to find him and help him bring us back.

But then, suddenly, our dreams were not so impossible any more. A bright young astrophysicist, as you would call him, who was to become our diplomat one day, found a way, a theory only and incredibly risky, to push through. A friend of his wife, specialist on dismantling weaponry, knew how to get into the military depot and where to find the battleships decommissioned for insubordination during the ravages of the Great War. And so, we just did it. We started running, and haven't ever stopped since.

[static, as the record is stopped, then started again]

Well, the battery is fully recharged now. That means I'm leaving. It means I will finally meet _him. _You know stories of him, you must know how I feel. You have heard of my people, _our people_, what they did, and how he saved us non the less.

I was one of the children, survivors in the ruins, on the day the monsters clouding our skies disappeared and took the stars with them. And I want to help _him_ to return our home back to the stars.

I thank you all for your interest, and for listening. I keep believing, and I am eager to see which universe our story will take us to. [footsteps, a lever being pulled. Finally, her voice already distant:]

I am MercuRiaobScuraliBelle, Libelle for short, and this is my final signing out. Farewell!

[the rising and falling hum of an engine, then static noise and finally, silence.]


End file.
